CHAPTER VII 



Miscellaneous Objections to the Theory of Natural 



Selection 



Longevity — Modifications not necessarily simultaneous — Modifications 

 apparently of no direct service — Progressive development — 

 Characters of small functional importance, the most constant — 

 Supposed incompetence of natural selection to account for the 

 incipient stages of useful -structures — Causes which interfere with 

 the acquisition through natural selection of useful structures — 

 Gradations of structure with changed functions — Widely different 

 organs in members of the same class, developed from one and 

 the same source — Reasons for disbelieving in great and abrupt 

 modifications. 



I WILL devote this chapter to the consideration of various 

 miscellaneous objections which have been advanced 

 against my views, as some of the previous discus- 

 sions may thus be made clearer; but it would be useless 

 to discuss all of them, as many have been made by writers 

 who have not taken the trouble to understand the subject. 

 Thus a distinguished German naturalist has asserted that 

 the weakest part of my theory is, that I consider all organic 

 beings as imperfect: what I have really said is, that all are 

 not as perfect as they might have been in relation to their 

 conditions; and this is shown to be the case by so many 

 native forms in many quarters of the world having yielded 

 their places to intruding foreigners. Nor can organic beings, 

 even if they were at any one time perfectly adapted to their 

 conditions of life, have remained so, when their conditions 

 changed, unless they themselves likewise changed; and no 

 one will dispute that the physical conditions of each country, 

 as well as the numbers and kinds of its inhabitants, have 

 undergone many mutations. 



A critic has lately insisted, with some parade of mathe- 

 matical accuracy, that longevity is a great advantage to all 

 species, so that he who believes in natural selection "must 



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